Yes indeed, it seems quite plausible as a working hypothesis that standard chemical/physical forces are sufficient to explain it.

I really don't see how, when there are millions to billions of essentially-lowest energy states.

Proteins have been likened to magnets attached to a strand of spaghetti. Why do the strands always fold up in the exact same way, or couple of ways? I don't see how electromagnetic field attraction is going to deliver a miracle here. . .

Joy: Cancer is a good example. It's generally not considered evolutionary, but almost exclusively environmental with genetic weaknesses to environmental triggers.

You're confusing "genetic" with "inherited." Cancer is a genetic disease. Even environmental factors (which, for most cancers, predict a very small proportion of the risk) cause genetic changes.

It's a series of genetic changes, some of which were inherited from parents.

If you disagree, how do you describe/explain things like the activating K-Ras mutations found in nearly all colon neoplasms? The Philadelphia Chromosome?

In other words, good old-fashioned mutation + natural selection.

I've seen this stuff trotted out umpteen times.

Time for some new ammo, dude.

Oh, you mean you should just be able to presuppose naturalism, and should not have to deal with criticisms of it?

Well, why didn't you just say so? And wtf are you doing at TT anyway?

The book explains among other things why the germ line is usually sequestered from a very early stage onwards during development.

Um… you do know the so-called "Weissman Barrier" has been breached, don't you? This was a factor in recent suspension of gene therapy trials, when it was found the researchers 'neglected' to inform the patients that they couldn't ever donate eggs or semen because the transgenes were found to cross that barrier. Part of that "Informed Consent" thing FDA ordered them to include.

Which might be a good thing if we can ever get good enough at gene-splicing to avoid promoters like human leukemia virus. Cure the patient, cure their offspring and all that.

I think life forms have a lot more to do with their forms and evolution than random accidents do, even though random accidents happen. Cancer is a good example. It's generally not considered evolutionary, but almost exclusively environmental with genetic weaknesses to environmental triggers.

You are very opnionated about biology for someone who obviously doesn't know all that much about it. Let me help you fill the gaps in your knowledge. You might like Leo Buss' "The Evolution of Individuality". The book explains among other things why the germ line is usually sequestered from a very early stage onwards during development. Roughly speaking, it's to prevent cancerous cells from making it to the next generation. It's all about levels of selection. Hope that makes sense, and if not hope it makes you think.

You created this thread based on a NYT article that highlights progress in evolutionary biology, including an important role for natural selection. If that's your idea of trying to make Darwinists look bad, you need to go back to the drawing board.

I haven't made Darwinists look bad. They do that to themselves without any help from me. The subject of the article is development, using the very same genetic "tool-kit" genes - there aren't that many of them - in different classes and even kingdoms to produce different evolutionary developments. I thought the article was quite clear about that.

No one denies that natural selection is a significant factor in what can live, how long it lives, if it can reproduce and whether it lives long enough to get the kids out of diapers. Life's a crap shoot, and sh*t happens. Natural selection as often selects out the fit as the unfit, so it's as random as biologists have claimed mutations are. Moreso if random mutations aren't the real mechanism of evolution, but more pertinent to devolution. Development is expression intensive, and expression has been evidentially tied to endogenous mechanisms related to environmental sensitivity-response called "epigenetics."

I think life forms have a lot more to do with their forms and evolution than random accidents do, even though random accidents happen. Cancer is a good example. It's generally not considered evolutionary, but almost exclusively environmental with genetic weaknesses to environmental triggers.

My drawing board has some blanks to be filled in. But your say-so isn't going to make me start erasing things already there. Sorry.

The benefit to me of not fixating on life versus non-life is that I am better able to fixate on the delusions about matter. In my opinion, devoting mental resources toward separation and classification only makes it harder to rid onself of the delusions.

I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from, though for all practical purposes [FAPP] of science, the forms, mechanisms and tools of life are very important. If there are any practical purposes to which we could put the knowledge. In biology, that's mostly medicine.

And there is a difference between animate and inanimate form. Raw (non-organic) inanimate matter will never produce a protein one. Abiogenesists of course think otherwise, but they're a long, long way from demonstrating the feasibility of that. Since proteins are coded for by DNA, and they can't account for DNA either.

And while proteins still exist when their makers are dead (we call it "meat"), meat doesn't magically produce more meat while it's dead. While functioning in a protein-based life form, proteins are themselves animate. Many of them are state-switchers, meaning they spontaneously change configurations to present different binding sites which serve different functions for the life form. This is of course a physical dynamic, quantum states. On the level of what determines the results of quantum states you're right - there is no matter. But living on that level to the point of denying reality doesn't contribute a thing to science or to life.

In my opinion only. Your Milage May Vary [YMMV].

Y'all may be coming at the evidence ass-backwards. Not surprising, given that Darwin originally came at evolution backwards. He had to start somewhere. Too bad things never really progressed from there.

You created this thread based on a NYT article that highlights progress in evolutionary biology, including an important role for natural selection. If that's your idea of trying to make Darwinists look bad, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Since when are the functional constructs of living processes "inanimate?" When they're dead?

My specific point is that the article I linked to is soley concerned with protein binding, and how natural laws determine the forms. However, it also makes sense that the natural laws must determine the forms of inanimate matter as well (in this case, I'm referring to the elements that are not directly part of the composition of life forms, regardless if the form is alive or a decomposing corpse). My interests are more about matter in general, and that is the chief reason why I finally put away my biology book. Life is just an illusion as far as I'm concerned, which is just a small part of a larger illusion about matter itself.

One analogy that I can think of is this:

I'm standing in front of a hologram of a rock. Suddenly I have instruments which let me magnify its features, and in seeing them I notice that they are made up of tiny particles, arranged to produce the form that I've identified as a rock. In looking at the particles, I soon see that they are made up of other, smaller particles. Meanwhile, the rock has disappeared, or more correctly I realize that the rock is not real, that it is a delusion. The smallest particles seem to be appoaching what reality is, but that is also delusion. What is coming clearer and more certain, is my awareness of the delusion. What I want to see is what is making the particles, or to put it another way, from what are the particles coming? THAT is what is real and that is what I'm interested in. I could have also made this analogy using as an example the hologram of a human being. I didn't because I wanted to underscore my point about not being fixated on life forms.

The benefit to me of not fixating on life versus non-life is that I am better able to fixate on the delusions about matter. In my opinion, devoting mental resources toward separation and classification only makes it harder to rid onself of the delusions.